


Faces in Time

by Fanfic_is_a_sin



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Other, several other characters mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-04-01 11:21:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4017859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fanfic_is_a_sin/pseuds/Fanfic_is_a_sin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky has an unexpected encounter while visiting a museum, and receives advice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Faces in Time

The faces playing across the largest screen were mostly familiar by force. They'd been on every screen, everywhere he went. Their names crashed against his ears like the rogue waves of snow that seemed lost in the oceans of Europe's skies. Sometimes, they were spoken with reverence, as if the kid on the street corner with the die-cast hammer on his keychain might summon Thor just by invoking his name. But more often, as time passed, he heard them spoken with judgment, hissed out as people watched scenes of catastrophe falling from the skies in huddles groups outside storefronts, cursed as gods were cursed by men waiting for a gun large enough to blow the clouds out from under them.

_When did you get so poetic?_

The thought was annoying. He recalled more and more each day, and each time he remembered the lines of poetry he hid behind when he killed for them. In his mind, he saw a man sitting at his desk. His daughters were leaving his study, and it was almost time. He poured himself a drink. Looked at it a while. Set it aside. He should have taken a taste first, at least. The rifle had a sickened, aged cough under the suppressor. It only took one shot. It almost always only took one shot. The man crumpled over onto his desk, staring at his drink. And yet, the shot was slightly off. He saw the man take a single breath, shaking and terrible.

_My living warmth, exhaled, you can see,_   
_on the clear glass of eternity._   
  
_A pattern set down,_   
_until now, unknown._   
  
_Breath evaporates without trace,_   
_but form no one can deface._

And then he was still. Was it a grasp at humanity? He didn't think so. More like...something to fill the time, until the kill was confirmed. The frustrating thing was, he could never remember when he'd started memorizing poetry. Or, more importantly, who took the time to teach it to him. He shook his head, the hat he'd fished out of a donation box sliding to one side. He wasn't here for the Avengers, or for more memories of the Winter Soldier. He was here for James Buchanan Barnes. 

He looked over to the left. A smaller screen, barely ever noticed by those passing by, was dedicated to each of the Howling Commandos, figures who seemed to have become less relevant with the controversy over newer heroes. He'd come here before, seen his own face among them. He knew he must have known them. Cared for them. But their faces were even less familiar than the ones on the larger screen. And as for his face? In the pictures, it was entirely to familiar. Different, maybe. It had never worn a mask. But it was undeniably his. 

The image on the screen dissolved into another, and there it was. Grainy, drained of color, but there. A video of him walking along a beach. It must have been cold. He was wearing a heavy coat. He turned, saw whoever was filming him. Smiled. Covered his face with a hand, fingers splayed between his eyes. In the present, he lifted his hand to his face, mirroring the gesture. It seemed so simple in the video. But when the tattered glove touched his skin, all he could hear was the soft whirring of the motors, all he could feel was the cold metal underneath.

"It would be easier if you didn't recognize yourself, right?"

He turned quickly, hand already at the knife in the pocket of his jacket. The man who'd said it held up both of his hands, and he relaxed slightly.

"I'm not here for that."

He turned back to face the displays, before someone saw something besides perhaps a homeless veteran paying respect to the greatest soldier in history.

"I know," he said. "They don't send you anywhere without one of the others."

The other man chuckled and stepped up beside him, looking off at the displays himself. His over-sized sweater and glasses made him seem more like someone's aloof father than one of the people from the main screen.

"Yeah, that's...accurate. Not going to ask why I am here?"

He shrugged. "No."

Banner stuffed his hands into his pockets and pivoted on his heels. For a man with the destructive capabilities of several armies, he had a lot of nervous mannerisms. "Yeah.." he muttered. "Cap mentioned that you're not big on conversation."

"Steve," he said. He wasn't sure why the correction was important, but he knew it was.

Banner paused. "Yeah. He also mentioned that you might be feeling a little conflicted at the moment."

"No shit." It had come in small, bitter pieces, but his sense of humor was something, at least, that felt like it didn't belong to the Soldier.

"I'm guessing there's still no chance that you want to let us help you?"

"Seems like you have trouble in the helping department."

He could tell the comment had caught Banner off-guard. "We saved the people in the city."

He shrugged. "Saving is different from helping."

Banner didn't seem to have a response for him. That was good. It meant he wasn't as stiff and bad at conversation as he felt. At least he could still make a point for himself, without killing anyone. 

"I'm taking that as a no."

He glanced around, keeping an eye out for any walking American flags. Or the red-haired woman. She fought too much like him for comfort. "You've all known where I was the whole time."

Banner shook his head, a tiny blur in the corner of his vision. "No. Well, Fury might have. But he's only told me, as far as I know."

That was the truth. Banner might have been a good liar, but he wasn't the best. And even the best couldn't lie to the Soldier. "Why you?"

Banner shrugged. "It's Fury."

There was a long silence between them, surrounded by the shuffle of people trying to sneak a hand close enough to touch the uniforms on their mannequins. Steve's was in a glass box, after its brief theft by the man himself. The new displays were 3-D printed models of each of the Commandos. Steve's was in an eternal strong pose, his face set in grim determination, as if ready to march into the crowd and attack him where he stood. It was strange to see his face there. It was off. His frowns were only ever worried. Never cold and angry like that. They billed him as a super-soldier. But even in all his own confusion, he knew that Steve Rogers was no soldier. Soldiers followed orders. Killed. Achieved objectives and completed missions. Steve only had one mission, and it wasn't one that he could complete. He was the Soldier. Steve Rogers was the hero.

"Oh, right. That...probably doesn't mean much to you," Banner was saying. "Well, I guess he thought I could help you."

"Steve couldn't. Why would you be able to?" Sometimes, he thought he sounded childish. But blunt and bitter came easily to him. And if people thought he was like a child, at least they would know to give him a simple answer.

"I'm not really sure. But I know what it's like to look at a TV and wish you didn't recognize yourself on the screen."

He let that rest on him a moment. "You don't think I want to go back to that?" he pointed to his mannequin. 

Banner looked at it, then back to him. "I think you know you can't."

He crossed his arms. "What, then?"

Banner walked over to the water fountain they'd been standing by, off to the side of the displays. He leaned down and hit the bar the sent water streaming upward. After a moment or two, he straightened back up again, giving a satisfied smile. "You know, it took me a while, after I first...when I had the accident. I thought that the only way to keep the people around me safe...and to keep myself sane, was to do everything I could to keep myself from turning into the other guy."

He frowned at Banner. "Yeah. That might be a good plan."

Banner held up a hand. "You'd think so. The trouble was, it didn't work. It kept happening. And every time, I thought it was because I didn't keep control, or have the right rules, or go to the right places."

"But that wasn't why," he surmised, trying to push the conversation along to whatever point Banner was trying to get to.

The doctor laughed quietly. "No, that wasn't why.I think it was because...I kept trying to make myself act like someone I couldn't be anymore. See, I'm not always the other guy. But I'm never the same person I realized that there were times that I was him."

"Or maybe it's just because it's impossible to live without getting angry," he suggested.

Banner looked at him with a little half-smile that he just _knew_ meant there was more philosophy on its way.

"Everyone thinks that the other guy comes out because I'm angry. Well, I guess that's my fault. All of my published research says that's the causal factor. But I don't think it is anymore."

Banner seemed to take his silence as a reason to go on.

"It was something Tony said to me, actually. Not the best guy for life advice, granted, but...he's right sometimes. Anyway, I think he might have a point about this. I think it's not about being angry. It's about...being afraid. You can control anger. Do yoga, take pills, whatever. But you can't control fear. And when you're afraid, you natural reaction is to fight back against whatever you're afraid of."

"So, what? I just have to stop being afraid of myself."

Banner shrugged. "No. I'm still afraid of the other guy. But now I know that there are other things that I'm more afraid of. End of the world is first on the list these days, but there are other things. Dying. Letting people get hurt when I could do something about it. And when I think about that, I realize that the other guy isn't really another guy. He's me. And he;s just as afraid of those things as I am. And if he knows that I'm more afraid of that than of him...he knows where the real fight is."

He shook his head, holding onto the bill of his cap this time. "Maybe I'm not you."

Banner nodded. "Yeah. Maybe this is the wrong kind of advice. But I think there are things you're more afraid of than whatever happened to you. Steve's still alive because of that."

His head snapped up. He still had a part of him, the Soldier, that said he should have killed Captain America. That he'd failed. But Banner was right. There was the other part of him. He'd thought of it as the part of him that was still Bucky. And that part lived to save Steve Rogers.

"You should probably figure it out pretty soon, though. You're not going to be able to avoid him forever. Especially not hiding right in the middle of Washington. And the Avengers are going to need you to not kill Captain America when he does find you. Last time, you proved that you could. But right now, you need to decide whether you're more afraid of being James Barnes _and_ the Winter Soldier, or of killing Steve before you can figure out who to be. Anyway. I can't really stay. But I promised Fury I'd talk to you to get a ride out of the country. So, uh, good luck."

Banner looked at him for a long, awkward moment, then turned and started walking off in that uneven gait he carried. 

"Last time," Bucky said, looking over a shoulder. Banner turned, his eyes widening a little.

"He had me on the ropes."

**Author's Note:**

> The poetry at the beginning of this work is from "What shall I do with this body they gave me" by Osip Mandelstam.


End file.
